


Deep Wells, Deep Deeds

by TwelfthPeer



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - Robert's Rebellion, F/M, Robert's Rebellion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-07 14:48:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21738508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwelfthPeer/pseuds/TwelfthPeer
Summary: Lord Stark called his banners, and the Wells sent their second son, Matrim. He always knew he'd have to do his duty in whatever form it came, but duty isn't such an easy thing to know when you march against your King in civil war. Half remembered dreams of another world don't help, but by the gods, he'll stand tall in defense of your Lord, no matter the odds.
Kudos: 12





	1. Chapter One: Bannermen

**Author's Note:**

> This started life posted on Spacebattles and Alternate History's creative writing subforums. Posting is the collected parts of the chapters, due to works of a serial nature working better on those mediums.

**Chapter One: Bannermen**

There was a charred, burnt piece of pig-skin pinned to the scrap of parchment from Winterfell, and three words:  _ The North Remembers. _ Maester Gwayne’s fingers still trembled as sleet beat against the shutters to the rookery. Matrim Wells ran his finger against the impression of House Stark’s signet ring and clenched his free hand into a fist. “War.” It had finally happened, then. A minor lord dreaming strange dreams wasn’t enough to butterfly away the death of a Warden of the realm. Time for war, indeed.

Mat swallowed hard. Maester Gwayne placed a hand on his shoulder, and he looked back up to the maester’s pale, drawn face. He patted the man’s hand. “It will be well, Maester. I’ll come home covered in glory and honors from Lord Stark and whoever winds up King.”

“Will it though, Lord Mat? I fear for what could happen should things go badly, and perhaps worse, as well.” Mat shrugged and didn’t let the anger he felt show. He should have ridden South with Brandon and kept him from whatever ill fate befell him there. But he hadn’t wanted to go to a Southron wedding, and so stayed at Queenswell. His hands tightened into fists once again, and he took a breath. Stalking through home infuriated at something he couldn’t have prevented even if he’d been there, axe in hand and armored, would do no good.  _ I need to speak with Cregan and Mother. _ Mat set off from the Maester’s tower at a brisk walk, moving through halls that had sheltered generations of his family, from the first, nearly mythical Beron Wells.

Mat swallowed hard. Maester Gwayne placed a hand on his shoulder, and he looked back up to the maester’s pale, drawn face. He patted the man’s hand. “It will be well, Maester. I’ll come home covered in glory and honors from Lord Stark and whoever winds up King.” 

“Will it though, Lord Mat? I fear for what could happen should things go badly, and perhaps worse, as well.” Mat shrugged and didn’t let the anger he felt show. He should have ridden South with Brandon and kept him from whatever ill fate befell him there. But he hadn’t 

Windows next to tapestries allowed natural light to illuminate them, detailing scenes from the glorious history of House Wells. Mat trailed his fingers along them as he passed by. One showed a Lord of the Well being flayed by a Bolton while a Stark army came on his rear. Another showed the founding of the family -- Beron, sheltering Queen in the North Arrana Stark in his farm’s well from a truly monstrous looking Bolton, his tongue lolling out and knife held at the ready to flay Beron.

Mat grinned, looked at the amber eyes of his ancestor, done in minute stitching of precious gold-thread. The tapestry had been the work of a long, long winter by the women that had made it. Another showed a shield-wall, shields decorated with the sigil of the Wells on them, holding a hill against wildling invaders. It was a long, long history of service the Wells could boast claim to, and Mat was proud to be able to continue that tradition, even if it meant war in the South.

He found his mother walking into the lord’s solar. “Mother, a moment.” She stopped, looked at him. “I have bad news,” he began. “The Stark calls us to war.” There has half a heart-beat where her face wasn’t the norm of cool and collected, where he could see a mother’s fear for her sons, and then it was gone, and she was as cool as when she had executed a wildling raider after his father Alaric had died, and before Cregan was old enough to swing the sword himself.

He followed her in, and thus found his older brother sitting behind the ornate weirwood desk, woodland creatures frolicking and chasing each other carved into the front side of it, beneath the watchful gaze of a huge direwolf. The fireplace held a roaring flame, heating the room. Mat glanced past his older brother’s head ducked over a thick tome, quill scratching busily. Their mother shot Mat a look, her gray eyes warm. Mat cleared his throat, and Cregan looked up.

“Mat!” He said, and pushed his chair back out from where he’d been sitting. He came around the desk, punched Mat in the arm. “And Mother! What brings the both of you here at the same time?”

Mat inclined his head to their mother, to let her go first. She gave a weary sigh, undid the hasty bun that her hair had been done up in. “Good news first, then? Well. Your chit of a wife has delivered a healthy babe, Cregan, and the succession is secure. You’ve a son. Congratulations. Your wife is well, too.” Mat clapped his brother on the back, and the brothers grinned at each other.

“I must go see him, then. Let’s all go! I want my son to meet his uncle and grandmother! By the gods. And he’ll need a name, and clothing— and so much to do!”

“Time for the bad news, then, older brother,” Mat started. “Lord Stark has called the banners.” Cregan cursed heavily, and their mother sat. “I’ll be leading our men South, of course. The Lord can’t exactly leave with an infant to raise and teach the lessons of leading to, can he?”

“You smug little shit,” Cregan said. “By the gods, I’ll go South with Lord Stark and make you regent for the boy, and I’ll thrash you to make sure you can’t march, d’you hear me?”

Their mother cleared her throat, and stood. Mat stopped before he could respond in kind. She looked at Cregan, with his short brown hair so unlike Mat’s own. “The solution, my sons, is simple. The Stark has called. House Wells has two sons, and they will both answer in their own ways. Cregan will remain here with his son, and write to the Hand of the King: tell him you forbade it, but Matrim has raised half the men and marched South in support of the Stark. You have remained in the North, to try to rally loyal men to the Targaryen banner and take Winterfell from the Starks.”

Cregan began protesting, and Mat grinned. He thought he could see where this was headed, and his mother’s cleverness was always a joy to learn from. “Hush, boy! You’ll do no such damned thing, of course. Except keep half our forces here, should the worst happen in the South and the Stark needs more men.” Then she turned her cool gray glare on him. “Matrim will do exactly as I just said, and for the love of the gods, Matrim: as the Starks protect us in this life and the next, so we do our best to protect them in this. Make sure you remember it in the South.”

“Mother, that’s  _ wrong. _ ” Cregan wasn’t angry, but Mat could hear that he clearly wasn’t a believer in the idea that their mother had outlined.

“And burning your liegeman to death while his son strangles himself trying to rescue his father is so  _ right? _ Letting your son kidnap and rape the daughter of that same lord is  _ right? _ ” There was no mere hint of displeasure in their mother’s voice now. Mindful of the servants, she was hissing her words, but the hiss was furious. “The Targaryens have spat on the Starks too many times — they broke the Pact of Ice and Fire, and your lord Rickard Stark is dead, his heir Brandon dead, his daughter mayhaps raped to death by that silver Prince, and you protest to me of  _ wrong? _ ”

“Cregan,” Mat broke in. “Deceit can be perfectly fine if it’s to defeat your enemy after they’ve proven they’re monsters, not men. Aerys is no man. What he did was ill-done, and proves he’s a monster that needs unseated. I mean to back the Ned as far as he will go, to my last dying breath if need be. We  _ serve _ . We serve the Starks, and we serve our people by protecting them. We can’t protect them if the King of the Seven Kingdoms is a madman that delights in burning his liegemen.”

“You know your duty, my sons,” Mother told them. “Now give me a hug before you start seeing to mustering the men and arguing about who to take and who to leave from the villages.”

They hugged her as she wished, and she went to see to Cregan's wife, while the two brothers settled into a pair chairs by the fireplace with a decanter of mead. Mat settled back, booted feet kicked out.

"I'll take the master-at-arms Theon," Mat told his brother.

"No, damn your eyes! You'll take Theon, and the best huskarl and archer, and leave me who, exactly to train the dregs if you take all the best men?" Cregan's protest was probably more than just for the sake of it, Mat decided, but he could still throw him a bone.

"Let me take the second best officers, then, and all the professionals with experience from the household troops. You'll still have Theon and the best officers."

**~Deep Deeds~**

In the end, Mat marched from Queenswell the third day after the summons arrived at the head of nearly seven hundred men. Over half the forces Queenswell could call, for all the last war had been over twenty years ago, and Mat not even born yet. Riders had been busy all the day after the raven, and Mat met the men that he’d be leading as they came in, shaking each man’s hand and thanking him for coming. They came in from the farms and villages, holdfasts and manors, the leading men and the middling men. At the end of the day before they marched, Mat took a tally. He had one hundred fifty men with the heavy armor and weapons necessary to be counted as a huskarl or man-at-arms, one hundred fifty archers with weirwood bows carefully and ritually gathered and carved from downed weirwood trees, and four hundred men with long spears or pikes and shields. Every eighth man had brought the horse or pony they used on their farms, and they had stakes with which to fortify their camps at night. 

He sat his own horse, wearing a long plaid over his breeches and shirt, the Wells banner of a plain stone well built like a wall with crenelations in hand.  _ His _ men were arrayed before him, and Matrim’s heart leapt into his throat at the thought  _ he’d _ be leading them south, to war. The last time he’d fought, it had been under command of his father Alaric and beside the household troops to put down a band of wildlings. He grinned. His officers sat beside him: Artos and Jon the Gray, from the huskarls. Torrhen and Iwan, from the archers. Edrick, Jon the Small, and Harlon, with the pikemen. 

His father had said that the best speeches were the shortest speeches. “I’m going south, my friends, to see what service Lord Stark will have of my axe and sword, and I hope you will come with me. Perhaps we shall even find loot and plunder in service of vengeance against Aerys the Monstrous, Aerys the Madman, after we put him down like a rabid dog. Let us go.”

He didn’t look back to Queenswell. They passed the outlying farms that fed the castle and town beneath its sheltering walls, the stands of trees on ground too rough to be worth clearing and putting under the plow, and weirwoods with the faces of their gods carved into them. He stopped inclining his head to them after the tenth, but he marked them all the same. The sound of seven hundred marching men, and several dozen horses drawing extra arrows and foodstuffs on wagons was like no other on the earth, and it was  _ all his. _ Mat couldn’t stop smiling. He turned in the saddle to all his officers, and passed the Wells banner to the piper they’d brought with them, a young man named Hugo.

At first the men sang, because marching was boring and there wasn’t much else they could do besides put one foot in front of the other. After the sun reached his zenith in the sky, and then began to descend, they stopped singing. Conversations were low and muted, but Mat felt that morale was good. After all, the last time a Northern force had ridden south, they wound up with a Lord Stark as Hand of the King for a brief time.

That first night, they camped beneath the ruins of a beacon tower that had once served to let Queenswell warn Winterfell of an oncoming Bolton force. With the coming of the Targaryens and the cessation of Bolton attempts to overthrow the Starks, the beacon towers had slowly been left to the ruin of time. Now it served to watch as his men slumbered beneath plaids, cloaks, and tunics after a dinner of whatever each man had brought to the muster. 

Mat sat with his officers around a fire, his own plaid cast aside. “There’ll be rain tomorrow,” Jon the Gray said. Then he spat into the fire and took a swig from his mead horn.

“We need to get into the habit of setting watches and digging latrines and all the things that make real war work, not the glory stuff those Southrons go on about,” Torrhen said. He was older, a veteran of the Ninepenny King war, and Mat knew that he’d either listen to Torrhen’s suggestions, or wind up paying for it in the long run. His father had had good advice about that: listen to counsel wiser than his own, but at the end of the day, the command was  _ his, _ and so the decisions, too.

“We’ll work up a watch rotation tomorrow on the march,” Mat said. “And include me. I'll sleep while I can, and deal with what my men do.”

“Good,” grunted Iwan of Weeping Weirwood. “‘S important for the commander to be with his men. I served the last Lord Bolton as an archer for ten or so years. He was a cold one, him, and didn't care for us as made up his retinue.”

“Aye, I’d heard tell about Bolton,” Edrick Pike said. He grimaced, then took a deep draft from his ale. “Word had it his wife weren’t so fond of him, so he had to take what most husbands are given free, if you take my meaning.”

“Aye,” Mat said as he stood. “I met him, once when I fostered at Winterfell. He didn’t like Lord Stark  _ or _ the Lordling Stark, near as I could tell. Or me, at that. Still, there’s a reason we left half the men on their farms, and it isn't because I think the Targaryens will actually raise an army this far North.” He clasped each man’s hand and back, and left them to their reminiscing and drink.

**~Deep Deeds~**

An archer acting as a scout spotted the column at mid-day, five days from Queenswell and two days from Winterfell by Mat’s reckoning. It was behind them, bearing no banner. 

He wheeled his horse around to look, and tried to count their numbers. He lost the count twice before he took a breath and thought about Theon, the master-at-arms’ trick for it: draw imaginary squares around what he guessed to be a unit, and then scale it up to cover the entire force. 

That gave him a count of around two thousand five hundred men. “Shite,” he said. Then: “Stop the march!” It took too long for his men to stop, and put on their armor, and start forming in their units. Long enough that if the column behind them had been ready they could have fallen on Mat’s men before they’d gone from marching column to battle line themselves.

He cursed the long peace for degrading skills, and himself and his brother for not insisting more forcefully that the men that owed military service practice more often. But the enemy didn’t appear ready either, and so he had precious time for his men to form their units, archers in front of the infantry and half his huskarls on each side of the pikemen, five men deep. 

Mat cursed the poverty of his family: huskarls on horses were men-at-arms not on foot and stiffening the spines of his pikemen and archers, even if he trusted the farmboys to stand, but huskarl on foot weren't cavalry. 

They formed in front of the wagons and horses, guarded by the youngest boys, and Mat almost jumped out of his saddle to hurry and arm. “Hurry up! Come on, get in line!” He chivvied his men, aided by his officers, and finally everyone was in place and armored and he was wearing chainmail and his spectacled and plumed helmet, shield slung on his back and long axe in hand. 

Jon the Small glanced at Mat, and then he drove the butt-spike on the Wells family banner into the dirt in front of his pikemen. “They’ll have to come and take it, Lord Mat,” he promised.

“I know it, Jon, and we’ll make them pay dearly.” Across the field, someone unfurled a flayed man banner, and Matrim grunted.

Wells shield walls dying to defend Winterfell from Bolton forces wouldn’t be the first time these hills had seen such a sight, he knew, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. Mayhaps when the blood-letting was done and the crow-feeders finished their bloody work, the Starks might ride back this way to avenge the earliest fallen men in his service during this conflict.

A rider was coming from the other force that was shaking itself out into line, so Mat swung himself back into his saddle. He let his long axe dangle low, ready for killing work. If it did come down to the killing, he promised himself that he'd die well, rather than under a flaying knife begging for mercy that wouldn't come.

His opposite wore a pink cloak over black chainmail, a black great helm, rich deer skin gloves, and crossed swordbelts. His pale gray courser was a fine horse, well formed and with a strong gait, Mat felt a sharp pang of jealousy for the wealth the Boltons enjoyed -- not nearly as much as the Manderlys, but still far more than the Wells. 

An undercurrent of fear and hate tinged it, and they stared at each other through helmet eye holes and slits, respectively. Wells men had been flayed by Boltons for centuries, until finally the Starks stamped on the Red Kings enough that they learned the lesson, and minded it. 

Matrim swallowed, glad for the face mask of his helmet and the high collar of his chainmail to hide his nervousness. Many truths of body language were hidden by cold iron armor. Mat would show this Bolton a hard truth of his own.

"Who remembers?" The Bolton man said.

The words startled Mat out of him readying himself to attack the man and his horse, and die well. He almost clicked his tongue at his horse Rusher in his startlement, but he managed to still himself from the 'go forward' command Rusher had been trained to. 

"The North Remembers," Matrim gave the traditional reply. The man took off his helmet and shook out his long black hair, smiling cheerfully. It looked out of place on the man's plain features, except for his eyes. 

His eyes, even with that smile, made Mat's knees want to knock together in fear. He mastered it, breathing in deep. He thought about the hate, and the times the Wells had helped sack the Dreadfort, and smiled to himself. Then he schooled his face back to blank expressionlessness, slid his axe into the loops for it to hang from his saddle, and removed his own helmet.

"Little lordling Wells. Riding to Winterfell, are we?" Bolton's voice was mild, a touch warm, and perhaps a bit wary. Mat told himself that Bolton was remembering the times that the Wells' crenellated well banner had topped the Dreadfort's walls, too, and gave his own smile. He hoped it cooled the man.

"I am," Mat said. "The Lord Stark has called, and I go wherever he leads. I know my place." Unsaid was all that lay between their families: the generations of blood-letting to defend, or get at, the Starks. Personal violence. Duels. Raping of captured womenfolk and peasant girls, the Wells emptying their fields and farms to throw forces in the way of Bolton advances on Winterfell and buying bitter time for the rest of the Stark oath-men to muster.

"It is a new era, Matrim Wells. Perhaps it is time to let the past grudges go, and lay the dead where they belong, and make our oaths to Eddard Stark as friends?" 

Fat chance, Mat wanted to say. Fat chance, and as soon as the war in the South finished, he'd be telling his brother to renovate and refortify the beacon towers, and Queenswell to boot. He wanted to say it, make it easy for the old grudges and hurts and anger to continue into this supposed 'new era'. Instead, he smiled again.

"We can make our oaths to Lord Stark beneath the same heart tree and old gods, and let all men fear the vengeance of the North." 


	2. Chapter Two: Oaths

**Chapter Two: Oaths**

Winterfell was grand, and huge, and all that it had been last Matrim had been there. It was also not entirely what he had expected, even with his memories of fostering there. But it seemed diminished, too, and he knew that with Rickard Stark gone, and Brandon perhaps dead, it likely would remain that way. His troops were split from Bolton’s by the steward that met them outside wintertown and quartered there. The steward led him, Bolton, and their senior-most officers to the castle yard, where they were greeted personally by Eddard Stark. His face was as long as Mat remembered it, but the eyes held more sorrow and weight in them, and the hair was growing long from whatever southron style it had been cut to. Stark wore no armor, only a long plaid over his breeches, shirt, and gray doublet stitched with a wolf’s head on the front. 

The ringing of a hammer on metal punctuated their greetings to their Lord, as the castle’s blacksmith went about his work, seemingly intent on letting even Moat Cailin know the Northmen were coming. Stark clasped hands with them both, welcoming them to Winterfell.

“It is not often that the men of the Well and Dreadfort make common cause,” he added. “It pleases me that my bannermen set aside their feuds and anger when the need arises.” Going unsaid was what that need precisely was, but they all knew it, and knew, to boot, that it was grim tidings that had brought them together and grim work they would be about. 

“Maester Luwin has received ravens from the Houses of the North,” Stark went on. “The Glovers have met with the forces of the clansmen in the mountains, and expect to arrive a sennight from now. The Lakes have mustered and will combine with the Umbers on their way, and the Umbers reported that they were perhaps a fortnight from arrival. The Karstarks picked up your trail, and will be here two or three days behind you. The Skagosi have promised to put ten hulls into the water, but I have my doubts about even that. The southern Houses will all add their forces to ours as we go south, the day after the Umbers arrive. The Manderlys will add forty hulls to the Skagosi, entirely separate from their force in the field.”

“Sending the full muster for every house would be folly, but lightly rests the rule of Winterfell on Skagos,” Mat said. “I’d expect nothing less from cannibals and worse.”

“Skagos will wait if we must take ship east,” Bolton said. “Cannibals aside, a strong showing for a land with no navy. I will send a raven home, with your permission, Lord Stark, and order Bethany to begin building a few ships myself. Still, I fear the worst should the Royal Fleet put troops on our shores with all our men in the South and at war.”

“That’s what the Skagosi and Manderlys are putting ships to sea for, Bolton,” Matrim said. “Certainly the Northern fleet won’t be strong enough to fight a battle at sea, but contest any kind of landing? Sure enough they’d be able to do that. Gods above know what the Skagosi are capable of, because I don’t.” Stark led them into the great hall from the yard, where some men were eating a mid afternoon meal.

“Winter is ending now, but it is always coming, my lords,” Stark said. “Winter is coming, and there are but two Starks left in the North. I will set down a will and succession, to have it settled and done before all the rest of my bannermen arrive. It will confirm Benjen and then Lyanna as my heirs should the worst happen in the war we ride to. I will have you both, and Lord Cerwyn, set your signatures to it as witnesses, and send copies to White Harbor, the Dreadfort, Karhold, and the Last Hearth should enemy soldiers set foot in our beloved North.” 

“You honor us, Lord Eddard,” Mat said. Speaking so directly with the Stark was... odd, he felt. Eddard had been gone for the Vale to foster with Jon Arryn when Mat had arrived to finish growing from boy to man at Winterfell, taken in by his father’s lord Rickard. Had things been different, perhaps Mat would have been swearing to Brandon and holding a holdfast for him. But the wheel had turned as it did, and so his return to Winterfell came at the heels of a war, and a new Lord Stark. He watched Stark greet his men, some of them armored and some not, how they clasped hands and nodded. Eddard had to have been back in Winterfell only a short time before the ravens had been sent, but it seemed that it was long enough for the people of Winterfell to be comfortable with the new situation.

“Honor us indeed,” Roose said. “Still, we must plan for after the war. What is to become of your sister?”

There was a pause for a heartbeat, and then it stretched out. Mat would’ve sworn that Stark’s face grew even longer and more solemn.“I will find her and bring her home,” Stark promised. “She is a Stark, and a Stark’s place is Winterfell.”

“What’s to become of her betrothal to Robert Baratheon, my lord?” Roose went on. Mat knew what happened when men stole women, and knew it was likely, too, that Lyanna was being raped into senselessness by Rhaegar, as horrible as that truth was. 

“As Lord Stark I will annul it, and let Lyanna decide what she wishes to do when she’s... home.” He didn’t say  _ better _ or  _ healed _ . Suspecting Roose’s thrust of the conversation, Matrim wanted to beg off from further discussion, uneasy at the idea that Bolton would even now be trying to bargain for a betrothal to Eddard’s sister. While still missing and perhaps being raped nightly, at that.  _ Bloody flayed man is cold. _

“If ever the Lady Lyanna should need shelter, Queenswell is always ready to protect the daughters of winter.” The promise came easily to him, because Matrim remembered the debts his family owed the Starks, and he would see that debt through until his last dying breath. He didn’t leave, though, and Stark sent a serving boy to find Lord Cerwyn to meet them in his solar.

Medger Cerwyn was waiting outside the solar for them, and greeted them with a murmured “Lord Stark,” and nods to Mat and Bolton. He wore a thick chestnut brown beard to match his hair, and his blue eyes watched Bolton carefully. Medger, too, remembered the tales of Stark and Bolton wars, and the costs they reaped. 

The desk and hearth in the lord’s solar were decorated with snarling wolves, running wolves, leaping wolves — in a word, wolves of all stripes and types. It was an old desk, had been there with Rickard Stark when he strapped Mat’s arse for kissing one of the kitchen girls and making sure he understood what would happen if he put a babe in her. It had burned Mat then, to be strapped like a boy of eight or nine years instead of the man he thought himself at fifteen, but now, five years on, winter ending and war approaching, he understood. He hadn’t laid with her, either, but she’d done well and married one of the Stark household archers.

Stark went to sit at the desk, and the next few moments were filled with the sound of quill scratching on parchment. Finally, he set the quill down and read it aloud. It was as he said; in the event of his death or crippling, Winterfell and the North went to Benjen, then Lyanna. As actual lords, Roose and Medger set their signatures and then signet rings to it first. Then Mat hurried his own  _ Matrim Wells of Queenswell, _ and pressed his signet ring of two crenellated water wells against the hot wax. 

Stark looked to them, and nodded. “It is done, my lords. The succession to the North is affirmed, and you have my thanks. My maester will see it dispatched. Your days are your own until we prepare to depart. I ask only that you keep the North’s peace amongst yourselves, and see your men keep discipline in the winter town. Although room has begun to open up there, the winter wasn’t as harsh as we feared, and so not as many old men as might be expected went hunting in the middle or end.”

~Deep Deeds~

  
  


The trappings of civilization seemed to fall away as he knelt beneath the heart tree in Winterfell’s godswood, listening to the wind, the murmurings and whisperings of the oaks and beeches in the wood. The melancholic face seemed to stare back at him, whispering  _ you don’t belong here, you’re not from here, we are not your gods. _ Matrim knew, as he knew once from half-remembered dreams and feelings, that he had lived in a world of logic and science, faith of any stripe diminished, but the lifetime he’d had to become accustomed to the old gods of his now-home helped.

_ Can you hear my prayers All-Father? Does Odinson the Thunderer help throw back the frost giants from this realm? Does Tyr dispense justice? What should I even pray for? Victory in war, the safety of this Wells family and the Starks they owe allegiance and loyalty to?  _ The old gods were the gods he had been raised with in this world, in the North of Westeros, but they had never made him feel welcome. Perhaps that was the secret, that they made no man feel welcome, for their worshippers had been the children of the forest.  _ Or are they the children? _

In the end, he decided, it didn’t matter. He knelt before the sad face of this god, and prayed to  _ his _ old gods, Odin the Allfather, thunderous and mighty Thor, protector of all the realms from the frost giants, and Týr of the single hand, mighty in war and wise in justice. It comforted him, to think of them on the other end of the heart tree listening, and so he asked not for glory for himself, but to preserve the last remnants of the Stark family, that they might know some peace at the end of the war. 

No answer was forthcoming, but the imagined murmuring from the trees seemed to diminish. That was fine, Matrim Wells decided. Lack of affirmation or no, he knew what was to come. The march south. Two battles, the whirling mess of Stoney Sept and the pitched grinder of the Trident. The carrion eaters would feast off the work of the spear and sword warriors of the Kingdoms, and so too would the men no better than the carrion eaters. He knew, too, his duty, and that was to serve and defend the Starks. Even from their own mistakes. 

_ Lyanna, _ he thought, and knew what would have happened. But he was here, now, and perhaps things would be different. Mat thought about a dance stolen beneath this very same weirwood. The snow had been fresh and spotty beneath all the cover the godswood provided from the elements, but the weirwood had been weeping. He thought, and made a prayer to Lofn, and made an oath. 

Benjen had laughed, made a jest about Mat going wildling. He’d flushed, he remembered, not entirely displeased at the thought, but then her betrothal to Robert had been announced, and the course for war set. _Now the realm will bleed._ _Gods curse you both, Robert and Rhaegar._

Whether Lyanna loved Rhaegar or not, the realm would bleed. The trees stilled at the thought, their murmuring dying, and he knew it couldn’t be the wind that had driven it. It was a windless day with snow still on the ground around Winterfell, and so there was no wind to have driven their previous susurrations. 

Mat stood from where he’d been sitting, uneasy at the thought that he had been communing with his gods in this world. In the last, they never spoke, and when people claimed they did, innocents died for it.  _ There were dragons, and there will be dragons. Perhaps the old gods do murmur at men through the trees and weirwoods. _ Either way, he’d come here for a moment of peace and quiet, a break from drilling with his men and officers marching, counter-marching, shaking from marching column to battle line. Now his break was over, the Umbers had arrived, and tonight they would make their oaths to Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North. 

_Why should we fight to crown a Southerner,_ he asked himself. _We bent the knee to dragonlords and dragons, and the dragonlords are weak and mad, and dragons are dead and gone for the nonce. _No army could ever make it past the Neck. Moat Cailin was unbreakable from the south, and the crannogmen would ensure no force ever made it through the swamps and fens. The army was nearing fifteen thousand strong, and only grain convoys from White Harbor were keeping it fed —Stark’s decision— rather than strip Winterfell and winter town’s granaries before the end of winter.   
He turned to leave after one last bow to the heart tree, and saw Benjen Stark watching him. Matrim inclined his head respectfully to the heir of Winter and the North, and Benjen grinned. “Matrim! I had to ride back from Last Hearth with the Umber forces; I was fostering there, with the Greatjon.”

“It’s good to see you, Benjen.” Mat returned his grin, glad to see the now young man. He would be fifteen now, and Winterfell couldn’t be without a Stark. Eddard would have ordered Ben’s return home from Last Hearth with the same raven ordering the Umbers to march. Ben’s sharp features grew solemn.

“I’m glad you’re riding South with Ned, Mat. Harrenhal was a disaster. After Rhaegar crowned Lyanna queen of love and beauty, nothing’s gone right.” Mat embraced the younger man, patting him on the back. 

“It’ll be well, Ben. We will find your sister and put Rhaegar to the sword, and avenge the murders of your father and Brandon.”

“Good,” he said savagely. “I hope you kill Aerys and Rhaegar and the Kingsguard and everyone that’s loyal to the Mad King.” Mat patted Benjen’s back again and then released him. 

“I was just leaving if you’ve come to pray,” Mat said. “We’re taking the oaths tonight, and I’m here in Cregan’s place.” Ben nodded. “I’ll be at the feast and ceremony,” he said. “I’m glad you’re my friend.” Matrim didn’t really have an answer for that, but accepted it nonetheless.

~Deep Deeds~

The torches planted around the godswood cast odd shadows across the snow. Eddard Stark stood in front of the weirwood, beside the pond with wisps of steam rising from it. Benjen stood next to him. The assembled lords of the North would make their oaths tonight, with the heartree of Winterfell as witness to affirm their loyalty to their chief for all time. Mat knew the lords that they met on the way south would make their oaths before whatever weirwoods were handy. But here, now, this rite would be done with all the ceremony and ritual it demanded, a tradition that stretched back to Brandon the Builder accepting the fealty of his lords following the raising of the Wall. 

The weight of the years seemed to press against Mat’s shoulders, the knowledge that in peace and in war he would be making his cause the Starks, no matter their fortunes in peace or in war. It was  _ right. _

_ Let the weight of the years sit heavy on my shoulders. This is a duty. Duty is heavier than a mountain, death lighter than a feather. _

They were all dressed the same, Mat and these lords of the North, and the Stark brothers with long and solemn faces; they wore breeches and their boots, and that was it. They were shirtless, as the first man to swear to the Starks had been, and they would seal their oaths with blood beneath the weirwood in the center of Winterfell’s godswood.

The words for this ceremony were old, older than Queenswell and the Wells, older than the Andals, older than the Stark wars with the Boltons.  _ Ancient. _

“Who comes before the heart tree?” Benjen, as his brother’s heir and now right hand man, spoke the words first.

Medger Cerwyn, as the first and closest lord to arrive, stepped out from among the assembled lords, and would go first. “I, Medger of House Cerwyn and Castle Cerwyn come before the heart tree and the old gods, and the Stark of House Stark and Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, to affirm my oaths to House Stark, and to make my loyalty known, now and for all time. Let the gods bear witness.” The Cerwyns were perhaps the first of the Stark bannermen, and so Medger made his oath first. He finished it by drawing blood from his palm with a stone dagger, letting it drip onto the ground before the heart tree, and then smearing the bark.

Roose went next, and then it was Matrim’s turn.

“I, Matrim of House Wells and Queenswell come before the heart tree and the gods, and Eddard Stark, the Stark of House Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, to affirm my oaths to House Stark.” He shivered when the wind picked up, feeling his skin prickle and goose bumps rise. He did his best to ignore it, though, and tried not to think that the gods were watching them. He drew his dagger. “By the gods to which this iron is holy, I will to Eddard Stark be true as his man. I will love all that he loves, and hate that which he hates, according to the laws of the gods and the order of the world, by blood and by deed. My sword is yours.” He drew the dagger across his palm, ignored the pain, and let the first drops hit the ground before the heart tree, and then smeared his palm’s blood on the white bark, staining it red. 

After that, the Karstarks, Glovers and clan chieftains from the mountains, Lakes, and Umbers made their oaths. The wind picked up, rushing and howling, and the heart tree dropped leaves. A leaf for every man that had made an oath. Mat shivered, and told himself it was only the wind. Then came Stark’s oath.

“I will provide justice, mercy, and a place at my hearth for all that need them,” the Stark’s oath began, and when he finished, Eddard finished it by making a cut in his own palm, too. The blood stained the snow red, and stained the weirwood darker red. 

They finished the ritual with the hand-clasping ceremony, where they knelt before Eddard and entreated him to provide them aid and succor should they need it, while vowing fidelity and loyalty to him, aid and shelter to him and his heirs from this day until the end of all days. Mat's goose bumps stayed, and he felt inexplicably warm, even with the wind howling and snow on the ground at the tail end of this winter.

No one wanted to break the seeming moment of the ceremony, but finally Lord Stark was first, his face drawn tight. The weight of the oaths that he had received seemed to bear down on him, and Mat thought about duty, a mountain, and a feather. It seemed there was a weight on his shoulders, as well. “There is food in the great hall, my lords. I must apologize that your men cannot all join us, but perhaps this might be best as a war council, for now.” Slowly, with stiff knees, most of the assembled lords began making their way to their feet. For now, enmities and grudges of the past were allowed to lie as near half the lords of the North, or their chosen stand-ins, made their way from the godswood to the great hall of Winterfell.

The hearths in the great hall were roaring merrily, and serving girls were ladling hearty helpings of stew into trenchers of yesterday’s bread. Mat gladly accepted his, and a horn of ale, strong and frothy and dark, everything ale should be to celebrate an oath taking ceremony. War in the North during lulls in the deepest depths of cruel winter was to be appreciated— it freed men to die in service of home and Stark, and ease the burden on the granaries of the north. 

All the lords took seats at a single of the long tables below the dais, with Lord Stark and Benjen at the head of it. They had brought no daughters or wives, and Mat knew he had had a hard time getting his men to do the same. Women with the camp eased a man's burdens of the heart, loins, and doing the washing, but they also needed protecting from raids and strikes by enemy forces. 

"I had the damndest time getting my brave lads to leave behind their sweethearts and wives," a Lake said.

"That's why I brought older men and left my sons at home," Greatjon Umber acknowledged after sucking down most of a chicken, booming voice loud enough for Moat Cailin to hear. "Two brave sons to carry on my legacy if I should fall in this winter war, and my oldest just married. No, my lords, though we've a lull in the winter now, our lord Stark's words are even truer: winter has come, winter has receded a touch, but winter will come again, even harsher and crueler."

"We will let the South know the truth of the words," Matrim added. And then, with relish: "We will show them why only two of the dragons ever came past the Neck, and what becomes a dragonlord without a dragon. Bran and Rickard Stark's shades demand justice done, and I mean to slide my dagger through Aerys Madking's ribs before a heart tree."

Umber, Karstark, and all the clan chiefs from the mountains agreed with that sentiment, and raised toasts to Matrim, his brother Cregan, and his new nephew who would remain nameless till summer came, though Cregan had promised him that the boy would become Rickard Wells, should he survive the winter.

Lord Stark brought an end to the toasting and wishes for plentiful sons and long lives by standing and raising a hand. "This is a meal and war council, my lords. We must discuss the line of march."

Rickard Karstark stood, smiling easily, flanked by his two sons, still sitting. "My lords, my Lord Stark, as a loyal bannerman to you, our liege, it is my honor to accept the position of vanguard, and leading the march, as surely these must go the Karstark forces as a cadet house of House Stark-" anything after that was cut off by jeers and shouts from the assembled men, led by Greatjon Umber. Mat took a note of who refrained from such shouting: himself, Bolton, the two Stark brothers, and the Flint of the Old Flints, a cousin to Lord Stark.

The shouts continued for perhaps thirty heartbeats, but Lord Stark's face stayed solemn. "I'll not march behind  _ Karstarks,"  _ Umber roared. "We were defending the North when the first Karstark was suckling at his mother's teat, by the gods! The honor belongs to us!"

Karstark took offense and opened his mouth to retort, but Eddard Stark stood again. 

"I will have no quarrels among my bannermen about the van," he started slowly. He looked around the room, eyes lingering on Mat and Bolton, sitting next to each other, and then he paused.

"There will be no van. We are marching to war and must maintain good order. The army of the North will have a marching order. First, the light horsemen from the clans, to act as our scouts and eyes. We are safe enough in the North, true, but it will be three sennights before we reach the Neck and perhaps an army waiting to pounce. Then the lords Bolton and Wells. They didn't murder each other on their way to Winterfell. Perhaps they can repeat the feat on our way South."  _ Is that a joke? From Eddard Stark? Perhaps it is! _ Mat grinned, to show there was no offense taken. That wasn't to say that he hadn't considered ways to shorten Roose's height by a head, of course. Just in case.

After the laughter from the joke finished, and all the plans for marching order and where and when to rest every fourth day, the feasting council broke up and left the great hall. Finally, Matrim was the only one left, the fires in the hearths dimming, as he stared at the spot where he’d asked Lyanna Stark to marry him. Winterfell’s lords were buried with swords across the statues over their tombs, to keep their vengeful specters in the crypts where they belonged. But what did they do for girls too young to know the consequences, but old enough to think themselves wise enough to make drastic decisions? There was no answer that Mat could find.


	3. Chapter Three: Southerly

**Chapter Three: Southerly**

It seemed that the gods were pleased with the oath-taking in Winterfell. The weather turned warmer, but not warm enough to melt the snow on the ground and flood the Kingsroad south with mud and mire the army. As a result, the army of the North made good progress. Mat was kept busy. His men marched at the head of the column, and he rode up and down the portion that was his, encouraging, joking, and letting them know he cared and was there. At nights, they camped beneath the stars, wrapped in cloaks and plaids, fires and bellies fed by the bread and meat and vegetables of the smallfolk of the North, who rejoiced to see their Lord, even if he rode to war after the deaths of his father and brother.

Eight days after having set out from Winterfell, after the Manderlys and the houses sworn to them had joined the march, after Dustin, Stout, and Ryswell forces were welcomed with open arms by the rest of the lords, and the Houses Flint not of the mountains had sent word they were camped with the forces of the crannogmen, there was another oath taking before a smiling weirwood. Red sap ran from the mouth, and afterwards Matrim sat, stared south and brooded.

Lightning cracked miles away, west of where they camped. The ruins of an ancient fortress loomed over them, remnants of one of the interminable wars between petty kings in the North before the Starks subjugated the others and rose to dominance. Mat had found a skull one day while taking a turn at plowing a field for rye, and there had been an arrowhead in the skull. They'd buried it, because chances were good that it was the skull of a man fallen in honorable service of the Wells. And if it had been a Bolton man, well, he wouldn't haunt the land that way. 

He was sharing his campfire that night with Artos and Grayjon, the officers of his men-at-arms. Artos’ beard was dripping with ale, a gift from the village of the sobbing weirwood, and he scrubbed at his hauberk of mail with handfuls of sand, brought by the Manderlys in barrels for that purpose. His archer and pike officers were with their men, taking the mood and feel of the formations and subunits, something Mat had done his best to drill into them, hard. 

He  _ wanted _ a unit that could rival the Golden Company for their discipline and endurance. What he had was not that.

"They say the Golden Company has never broken and run," Jon the Gray said. A veteran of the Ninepenny Kings war, he had started life as a free holding tenant of Mat's family, too poor to be anything but a pikeman. War had made him wealthy enough to become a man-at-arms, and now he was the headman of the village with the grimacing weirwood. He had feasted Alaric Wells before Mat's father died putting down a wildling band, and regretted bitterly that he hadn't ridden beside his lord as he felt he should have.

"They say so," Mat acknowledged. "But discipline and having never broken has never met Northern archers with weirwood bows, either. You're all freemen, tied to my family by choice and loyalty, not those serfs tied to the land and lords they have in the South. A free man fighting to defend home and hearth are worth five pressed peasants." He didn't mention that if some men had refused to answer Queenswell's summons, they'd be evicted and their homes burned by their neighbors and Cregan.

"Aye," Artos spat. "But 'tain't us and the men at arms I'm worrit about, laird, 'tis the archers and pikes." Mat was too, but not as much as Artos seemed to be. 

"Why do you think we've been drilling the men every damn day?" And they had. After the march. On rest days in the mornings. In the afternoons on rest days, they competed: swordfights. Ball games. Archery contests. It felt more like a travelling festival than an army marching to war at times, but when the fighting came, and they created a feast for the carrion-eaters, they all would be grateful for the extra practice and drill. And because they were his men, and he loved them for following him south into war, Mat slept rough like they did and shared what they ate. Not for him, the big tents that Lord Manderly had brought, or the fine wines that Bolton and Manderly shared by a fire. 

Mat drilled with them, too. Every time his men practiced different formations, whether a line, or a deadly pike schiltron of circular or rectangular shape, or a mixed formation, all his men in a jumble. He'd asked Manderly's knights for help, to give his men a cavalry troop to practice themselves against with no danger of being gored by a lance if a man was out of position or didn't have his shield up. In return, Mat's men gave Manderly's knights something to do that wasn't currying their horses or taking care of their gear.

"Golden Company on the mind, Jon?" Artos' voice wasn't mocking, but he knew the other man's history as well as Mat. 

"Aye," the answer came. "They can attack with their pikes, laird," he addressed Mat. "We need to be able t'as well."

"You're right," Mat said. "Every pikeman has a hand axe or dirk and shield, aye?"

"That's a question better asked of the pike officers, but I think so, milord." Mat nodded at Artos' answer, then smiled.

"Tell the men. Next rest day, that will be a full day of drill. If the men at arms can hold off an attack from the pikes, a double ration of ale or mead for each man, and I'll pay. If the pikes break through them... the same to them. Oh, and Artos, Jon? I'll be taking part tomorrow with the pikes."

The meeting broke up, Artos and Jon to go tell the pike officers and then their men, Mat to brood alone. He stared southwest, where the thunder heads crackled and boomed miles away, and when he fell asleep beneath his plaid he dreamed of a war in a desert. 

**~Deep Deeds~**

  
  


Mat stood next to Manderly and Cerwyn, across from the lords Ryswell and Bolton, and at the head of the table in the inn of the kingsroad south stood Lord Stark. His arms were crossed while he stared at a map, and most of the rest of the lords stared at Eddard Stark. Matrim was looking at the map. All of them save Manderly were painfully raw-boned and thin after the winter, where Mat’s memories of the summer had them broad and powerful.  _ Good lords sleep rough with their men, and eat what they’re eating. If they’re eating, _ his father had said. He wondered sometimes if his father had  _ suspected _ , when Mat asked to be sent to Winterfell at twelve, suspected that his younger son wasn’t quite from around the area, as it were. 

It was gone and done, now, and Alaric Wells buried beneath the Queenswell, sword above his tomb while he became food for worms. In the here and now, though, the inn they stood in had cast open all the shutters and dozens of candles burned merrily, the better for the lords of the North to speak their pieces. The map Eddard and Mat stared at was of the Riverlands, and a raven’s parchment message lay atop it, dirk thrust through it, the map, and into the table below at the place where Robert Baratheon had perhaps been wounded. 

“I have conjecture and scraps of news, but I believe the strategic picture in the South looks like this: Robert defeated three separate forces in a day-long engagement at Summerhall,” Eddard started. “He has bent the Stormlands back to his will, and now the full muster of the Stormlords marches at his command. Robert has fallen back into the Stormlands, following a defeat at the hands of Randyll Tarly at the head of a force from the Reach. Jon Arryn has settled the Vale, and he and Hoster Tully are attempting to settle the lords of the Riverlands that feel their oaths to the Tullys aren’t so pressing.

I have received a raven from King’s Landing, signed by the Queen, her daughter the Princess Shaena, and Princess Elia. They beseech the North to return to the King’s peace, and promise that if we help settle the other rebels, Aerys shall be dealt with by Rhaegar.” Eddard’s face was grimmer than even usual. Mat spat on the dirt floor beneath the table. 

“Forgive me for speaking out of turn, my lord. He will settle his father like he settled your sister— out of reach and hidden away at best. Then he will demand we lend him our swords to finish with Baratheon, Arryn, and Tully — Houses bound to our Lord Stark’s by oaths of brotherhood fostering and a betrothal, a fostering, and a betrothal. Let’s show him the color of his guts with our steel.”

“Little lordling Mat’s not much wrong,” Jon Umber rumbled. “There were sacred oaths undertaken by Lords Rickard and Arryn, Lords Rickard and Robert, Lords Rickard and Tully. Sworn in their septs, and before Winterfell’s heart tree. I stood as witness,” he said, tugging at his beard. “I stood as witness, I say, and I mean to stand as witness, for Lord Eddard Stark when he swings the sword and puts down Aerys and Rhaegar for the  _ evil _ things they have done.”

“But what about the innocents, if there is such a thing, in House Targaryen?” Rickard Karstark said. “I don’t mean to see Aerys and his foul son disinherited, only for the babe Aegon or child Viserys to be just as monstrous as the King and Crown Prince.”

“The princesses can be betrothed and then married off,” Bolton broke in. “Preferably far from King’s Landing and where no men will gather swords and lances to the cause of seeing themselves beside the girls as King in the Red Keep.”

Medger Cerwyn sneered through his beard. “Aiming for a princess for yourself, Bolton?” Roose turned his pale, cool eyes on the man wearing a tabard with his family’s battle axe on it over ringmail, and Cerwyn paled slightly. “If I were, I assure you, I wouldn’t be so naive as to announce it before gods and men while still married to the Lady Bethany, who is, I pray, with child once more.” 

“Forgive me, lords, but is the Princess Shaena not betrothed to the Prince Viserys, as is the Targaryen way?” That came from Flint of Widow’s Watch, a thicker set man with broad shoulders and a guarded face.

“We don’t know,” Howland Reed said. He wore armor of bronze scales over a dark green tunic and brown breeches, and carried a long three-pronged spear and a small, round leather shield. “We don’t have any men in King’s Landing to get us information about what Aerys is doing or thinking, and Rhaegar has dropped from view.”

“Either way,” Lord Stark interrupted. “We are men of the North. We do not slaughter babes in arms, or children innocent of the folly of their father’s decisions. It would be worse than turning a child seeking shelter away during winter.” His face never ceased being solemn, Mat knew. Not after they’d ridden south, leaving Benjen sniffling and trying manfully to not cry. “It is nearly mid-day. Our march was not nearly as difficult as it might have been, with the weather permitting. Now comes the hard marching, and harder fighting. Let us take a break, and then we shall discuss commands.”

Mat made his way out of the inn and to the grove of weirwoods that this village tended. He was joined by Eddard Stark, and the two of them knelt before a long, grim face that could have passed for Stark’s cousin. Matrim tried to pray to the gods in the trees, the spirits of the cold northern land he called home now, but after a moment ceased. It felt wrong, but it would probably feel wrong to pray to his old, his first gods, here, somewhere sacred to the gods in the trees.

_ But what if they’re the same gods? Then it’s moot, and your prayers will be heard, or not, all the same. _ Mat knew his place, and so once he had finished his loose prayer, he waited for Stark to break their silence. Finally, the man did.

“I did not want this war,” he said. “But it has been forced upon me, upon the North. War is bad for the land and people.” Mat waited. Stark would explain, or he wouldn’t, and Mat pressing him would do nothing. “It...if a King may have no friends, for all in the realm look to him for protection and justice, a high Lord may have few.”

Matrim shrugged. “I am the son of a lord, my lord. As the people that look to my family owe us duty and labor, loyalty and trust, so do I have a duty to the people that look to us. I must ride to their defense when they need it, whether it be in war or in a court of law. I carry the justice of the Starks at my hip, and as I carry your justice, so must you carry the justice of  _ all  _ the North at your hip and on your shoulders. Death is lighter than a feather, lord, but duty heavier than any mountain.

What you must ask yourself, Lord, is if this war is a duty or a personal affair?” Mat shrugged again, and Stark closed his eyes, shoulders slumped as they knelt before the heart tree.

“I would be a liar, Matrim Wells, if I said that I would not take pleasure in extracting vengeance for my father and brother. But this war is a duty. A North that appears weak  _ is _ a weak North, for there will be men that whisper the Starks can’t even avenge the deaths of a Lord and his son, let alone raiding or being taken advantage of.”

“Then you know your duty, my lord. A weak North is a vulnerable North, and is winter not coming?”

“Winter always comes, Matrim.”  



	4. Riverlands and Riverlords

**Chapter Four: Riverlands and Riverlords**

Riverrun lay at the confluence of the Tumblestone and Red Fork rivers, with a huge ditch on the west side that could be filled by a sluice gate. Matrim stared at it as Lord Stark rode out the castle beside Hoster and Brynden Tully, and Jon Arryn, who had led his forces out of the Vale. Its walls were built from reddish sandstone, quarried from the gods knew where. “They say Catelyn Tully is a fine lookin’ woman, Mat,” rumbled Torghen Flint of the mountain Flints, sitting a hardy dappled mountain pony, his braided beard reaching down to his chest from beneath a spectacled helmet like Mat’s.

“You’re married, uncle,” Matrim replied idly. He patted his horse’s neck, and then switched to rubbing the beast’s coat, grimacing when the gates stayed open behind Stark, and men-at-arms and lords followed the Tullys.

“What your lovely aunt doesn’t know won’t hurt her, lad.” The thick man grumbled, then took a swig from a canteen. “‘Sides,” Uncle Torghen continued: “I hear tell from Lord Fat Lamprey that the Ned is to marry the Tully girl in place of the Bran.” 

“It might be pleasing to the gods to see that oath honored,” Mat said. He thought about a girl with dark hair and eyes, pale as the fresh snow, and then he thought about a promise made beneath Winterfell’s heart tree to himself. “But I think it might please Lord Arryn to bring fifteen or twenty thousand men to the army, more. We’d best be about getting down to see what the word is.”

“Gods or not, but I’d not refuse that kind of price for fifteen thousand men for the war,” Torgen leered, and Mat was cheered by his uncle’s easy, but harmless, lechery. They started down the cleared hill overlooking the reddish castle, and he could see Bolton and Manderly, the other mountain chieftains, all the other lords of the North moving to meet the three high Lords of the realm riding out.

“Show me the man that would, and I’ll show you a ruddy septon, mad on his gods.” The area around the drawbridge across the Tumblestone had been cleared of trees at some point in the past, to allow for a sally by cavalry or men-at-arms, and when Ned Stark slid from the back of his gray horse, long cloak brushing the ground, the Northern lords went to their knees. He motioned them to stand, and his eyes ran over all of them, before finally settling on Mat and his uncle. 

“Lord Flint.” Eddard Stark said, respectful but firm. Mat suspected that he was still trying on the mantle of Lord Stark, molding himself to the needs of the title. “You’ll take your men, and the forces of the Wulls, the Norreys, your nephew’s men, and Lord Tully’s vassal, Lord Shawney. You’re to act as a strong scouting force to the southeast, and start acquiring grain to feed the army. We must discover if the forces of the crownlands have mustered yet. Don’t force a fight you can’t win, but if you think the odds and circumstances favorable, by all means, don’t shirk from killing them before they can join the Targaryen army.” Matrim grinned while his uncle nodded. A fight meant ransoms, and ransoms meant he might make himself and his family wealthy, wealthy enough to attract smallfolk settlers from the South to cut back the huge forests that dominated so much of the North, to put more land under the plow. 

His uncle stroked his beard, then dragged Mat aside. The Lords Shawney, Wull, and Norrey, followed. Brandon Norrey looked like a goateed fox, thin and clever-looking and half a head taller than Torghen, while Hugo Wull had a long beard hanging down to his large gut, barely contained by a shirt of mail. Shawney was the best armored of all of them, his breastplate and gorget and greaves putting the Northerners’ shirts of mail to shame. His reddish brown hair was worn pulled back, and he had a blunt, open face. He scowled at them. 

Torghen clapped Lord Shawney on the back, grinning. “Cheer up, riverlander. First to march means first to fight, and first to fight means first to kill! I’m Torghen, this is my sister’s get Matrim Wells, and those’re Hugo Wull and Brandon Norrey, ruddy half-wildling, they are, and always sharpening their daggers and looking at my back!” Torghen mentioned Mat with warmth in his eyes and a smile, softening the seemingly harsh words.

“Your mother was a bleating ewe, Flint,” Norrey smiled coolly, “And I had her like you Flints have all your sheep, the back two legs held up in my boots —” 

Wull interrupted him with a laugh, deep and booming, and punched a fist into an open hand. “All this talk of having mothers and sharpening daggers. We march to war, my brave lads, and the Stark demands our cooperation, no matter how much I’d like to see you both strung up like a chicken gizzard before the gods.”

“Forgive me, my lords,” the riverlander broke in, fish-crested helmet held under one hand. “But as indelible as your argument is, if we’re to set out, needs must that it be soon. The Stauntons and Buckwells together can muster near three thousand men, and they’re the closest lords of the crownlands to the riverlands. I’d not see them burning our people and castles."

Matrim shrugged. “Reasonable enough to me, uncle, lords. We’re the first to march, and first to fight. Let's strike a blow against the Mad King’s forces.” Torghen ordered them all to collect their men and make ready to march immediately, to meet by the road that followed the Red Fork east. Mat left the clearing by the drawbridge of Riverrun. The riverlands were gorgeous — rolling hills, and streams and rivers, stands of trees between the farms, not much wilderness. Not like his home, not like the North, with its huge swathes of land untouched by man. He wanted to grin, but then he thought about Andal invasions, and drew his lips tight. 

Artos and Jon met him by the Wells portion of the Northerner camp, beneath the fortified well that his family had as their sigil, their mail coats on and belted tight at the waist, helmets held under their arms. His heart beat faster in his chest, with pride at his family banner, and tried to keep from grinning.

“We’re to march beside the Wulls, Norreys, Flints, and a riverlord named Shawney. We’re going to scout southeast, see if and where the crownland lords are gathering their swords, and start collecting corn and livestock to help feed the main body of the army with.” He thought about getting the chance to drive a sword through Aerys’ heart, thought about sticking his sword in slowly, to delight in the man's pain and misery, and then stringing his entrails from a tree he might carve a face into and create a new old god for the South. Then he shook his head. The chances that he’d get to do that were poor to none, as delightful as the idea might be.

“We’ll go tell the other officers to get their men ready, lord,” Artos said. He and Jon left Mat, and Mat found young Hugo the piper running through some kind of exercise on his reeds and chanters.

“Up and at ‘em, Hugo my lad! We’re to scout the border between the Crownlands and riverlands, and mayhaps strike a blow against Aerys’ loyal men before they’ve got their breeches pulled up.”

Small Hugo packed away his pipes carefully, and the two of them set about lowering the Wells family banner from the spear where it fluttered in the wind, cloth flapping. The sounds of men packing their gear from where they’d been sleeping, falling into line for march— all the sounds of war, filling the air. Horses made all their assorted noises, whuffed and neighed and snorted. Men shouted commands and orders, and made ready to march.

**~Deep Deeds~**

There was no clear border between the river and crownlands, even after two days’ marching. The land gradually shifted from rollicking hills and trees and rivers to flatter land, but still just as many trees and streams. It was good, rich land, and Mat decided that he wouldn’t mind plowing the ground here, if the chance offered itself for him to become a lord in his own right. Now, though, Lord Shawney’s light cavalry and Uncle Torghen’s clansmen on shaggy ponies were driving cattle back to the main army, while some of Wull and Norrey’s clansmen cut grain out of a field and ransacked a village any stored food.

Torghen had ordered that there be no rape, because even though it was a war, they were going to be marching through here again in the near future and that would just be bad policy. To make his uncle’s point clear, Mat had executed two of Shawney’s men-at-arms and one of his own men-at-arms the previous evening. They’d kicked, after he’d taken their heads, their victims watching with blank eyes.

He could still feel the dead men’s eyes, and their victims watching him as he swung the axe. He was startled when a hand descended on his shoulder. He turned to look, and it was Torghen. “Norrey told me what ye did, laddy.” Mat nodded, and turned back to watch as some of his archers poked through a woodline, moving to cover the Riverlord’s light cavalry while they robbed some poor farmer of his winter wheat, because now Shawney put them maybe three quarters of a day’s march from Staunton’s castle and Torghen wanted infantry covering the raiding cavalry. “It isn’t easy the first time, is it?” 

“No,” Mat finally said. “It’s not. It’s different in a fight, or a battle. There, it’s them or me, and I know which my mother would prefer I pick everytime. Last evening was...”

“Were ye sick? There’s no shame in it. I was sick, my first time.” Mat suspected that his gruff uncle was about to launch into the telling of it, but he was rescued from the man’s attempt to comfort him, as appreciated as it was, by a sharp whistle from an officer in the archers in the woodline, below the hill from Mat and Torghen.

The archer officer sent a runner, and he made the two hundred yard sprint fairly fast. He arrived panting, but grinning, and had stripped down to shirt and breeches. “Smallfolk, milords,” he began after he’d caught his breath. “Got scythes and hatchets and sickles and ooooh but they look ready fer a fight, milords.”

Torghen flipped the man a silver, and grinned when the man slipped it into a purse around his neck. The grin disappeared, though, when Mat’s archers started streaming back across the field. Mat and his uncle spurred their horses forward. “Gods damned fools,” he said. “Sheep turds for brains, little arselings, if I’ve given orders that rape’s to be met with death why would they think we want to kill them? We’re in a lull in the bloody godsdamned winter, they can just plant their  _ fucking _ fields again when we leave.”

“‘Tis winter all the same, Uncle,” Matrim said. “This might be the last of their seed corn, and their last hope.”

“Bloody fucking fools,” Torghen snarled. He turned his head to Mat. “Go get your bloody pikes and men-at-arms, and form on the field on the far side from the trees.” Mat nodded, heart pounding, and turned his horse, trampling some poor peasant’s work beneath his horse’s iron shoes.

He galloped across the field, his horse’s hooves sending clods of dirt flying, and the ride back to the rest of the force was fast, urgency lending weight to his spurs. He pulled his horse up short of trampling his men, and was out of the saddle in a heartbeat. “Artos, Jon, Jon, Edrick, Harlon,” he panted. Matrim handed his horse’s reins off to Hugo the piper, told him to get the horse with the others, and undid his sword belt from around his tunic.

“There’s smallfolk massing to try to drive us off the land,” he said, and a pikeman helped him pull on his mail hauberk, then belt it at the waist. Matrim gave the man his thanks before speaking again. “We’re probably going to kill them,” he added. “Pikes will split in two, the huskarls will march between the two formations of pikes, and we’ll discuss the real formation once we reach the field.” They set out, Mat at the head of his pikes with Edrick, who came from the village with the grim-faced weirwood. He left his shield, and had his long axe slung over one shoulder as they marched. Edrick wore a fine one-handed axe at his belt, engraved with ornate knotwork and lines, and carried a pike, his small round shield hanging from his shoulder.

“It’ll be a good first fight, milord,” Edrick said, beard bristling. “Give the lads a chance to get blooded, lick the blood of the foe from their axes and swords. I’d trust our northron lads against any southron pissant peasants any day.” Mat turned his head to look at the rows and ranks of bearded, grim-faced northerners. Sunlight glinted and flashed off pike-heads, on metal helmets and the bosses of shields, and the clangor of all the panoply of men at war was a din and paean to the gods. 

“Sing out,” Mat roared, his lungs filled with fine late winter air, crisp and cool. “Sing out true, and let these southerners know that the men of the North march!” The first song, started by a fine young tenor, was a song of homesickness and duty, about a man going o’er the hills and far away. Four more songs carried them the mile or so, at a brisk jog, to where Mat’s archers were exchanging desultory shots with crownland smallfolk with slings and javelins, and the first few ranks of pikemen broke out into laughter when a cloth-yard long shaft took a slinger in the throat, fell backwards, and hit another man on his way down. 

“By the gods, if that’s all we’ve got to fight while we’re in the South, the women and plunder will be easy pickings!” Mat couldn’t identify the voice, but he wanted to tell the man that nothing was truly easy, it only appeared so before luring one in. Instead, Edrick shouted for silence and his uncle Torghen rode up, axe drawn.

“Good,” the mountain chieftain said. “Form your pikes in the center, and heavy infantry and archers on the flank and angling out, like the rune  _ veh _ , yes?” Mat nodded, catching the basic plan. His men would form the three battles for the fight, and the formations would be filled out as the other northerners and the riverlanders arrived.

“It will be done, Uncle Torghen,” Mat said. They formed across what had been a field of winter wheat, now trampled with the marching and counter-marching of men, and Mat swallowed. A fight, even if not a real fight between soldiers, still had the opportunity to leave him draining his life-water into the ground, to feast the wolves and ravens. His pikes slung their shields forward, to dangle from around their necks as they set pikes and braced. He stepped forward, jammed his helmet on his head, and gazed across the plowed field at their foe. Mat tried not to listen to the pounding of his own heart in his ears, amplified by the metal of his helmet.

They were a ragged, ill assorted mob, but he guessed their numbers at nearly thrice his own men, but no match for all the force Stark had dispatched to scout, a mailed fist probing or with a dagger held, should it prove necessary. He narrowed his eyes, trying to see. He beheld a few men in ragged bits of armor, perhaps inherited from fathers or grandfathers. They were trying to bully the smallfolk into forming a line, slow and fractious compared to his own men. Crows and ravens and eagles circled overhead, somehow sensing a fight approaching, and Matrim felt eyes on him. He turned to look, and saw two ravens sitting on a bare tree branch, staring at him silently. If he squinted hard through his eye holes, he could almost see a face in the tree’s rough bark.  _ Odin, _ he thought.  _ Wanderer, if truly you are there, I hope you’ll meet the good men we send to you in your corpse hall. _

The ravens gave a synchronized  _ croak _ and lifted off the branch at the same time, and Matrim wanted to reach for a hammer amulet that didn’t hang around his neck. He swallowed, and turned to look back at the foe, now coming at them across the long field. He turned his head over his shoulder, saw his men with helmet straps tightened, set and ready to meet the foe. One archer was hurriedly trying to change his bowstring, berated by a grim officer as he did so, and Mat’s heart raced at the thought that now, at last, he would be doing what he had been born for.

The thought came unbidden to him, perhaps whispered in his ear by some nameless god, that if he survived the war, he would need to see a great sacrifice given over on the Isle of Faces, a hundred cattle or sheep or even criminals, done in the darkest of night, their entrails left dangling over the tree limbs. That was how it had been done in the old days, when the religion of the First Men was still as hard and cruel as winter, not like the softer form practiced now.  _ I will give you gods my beloved horse, _ he thought, and then went back to the ranks of his pikemen. 

“We’re going to kill them all,” he told them. “The men-at-arms and archers will funnel them into us, because they’ll not want to charge arrows and men with big shields and decent mail. They’ll think we’ll be easy pickings, if they can just get around your pikes. You’ll learn them the error of their ways, because we’re not going to wait for them to gut themselves on your blades.” 

He took in a deep breath, and then exhaled. Then he breathed in once more. “ _ Pikes!” _ he roared. He risked a glance back. His formations were becoming bigger, the other men filling in behind his own. Mat looked forward, then called the next command: “ _ Prepare to advance! _ ” Braced pikes were hefted, the first five ranks of men levelling their weapons to point forward, a very angry hedgehog of Northmen. 

“ _ Advance!” _ he screamed the last word, stepping forward with the first rank of his men, axe hefted and wishing desperately he’d brought his shield as the group facing them sent stones and rough javelins their way. They advanced deliberately, going forward to crush the foe under the rolling inertia of a block of attacking pikes, eager to win the first battle of the war for their cause. There was no singing now, only the grunting of men as they fought to keep their twelve foot shafts under control, curses and mutters as spent rocks and javelins rattled against helmets or armor or shields after expending their energy on the rows of pikes waving in the air.

They clashed against the peasants with stolid dull  _ thwunks, _ pikes penetrating flesh and guts, punching through rough wool clothing and makeshift wooden armor, and then Matrim was amongst the foe. He wanted to feel bad as the first strike of his axe split a man's head in two, that these people stood no chance, but he knew they’d have given his men no chance at surviving if they could have. The man's club fell from his lifeless hands to the furrowed dirt below. An eagle shrieked, and a man screamed as a pike’s point went in.

The first two rows of smallfolk were stopped, and dropped in their tracks. His pikemen grunted, men working in unison to knock aside clubs and make-shift spears of scythes so another man could thrust his point into soft throats or eyes or groins. Mat blocked a blow from a wicked cudgel with nails jutting out of it, a makeshift morningstar, with the haft of his axe, and headbutted his attacker. The man staggered back, his brown eyes wide and unseeing, and Matrim took the heartbeat of breath it bought him to step back into the sheltering storm of steel and wood that were his men’s pikes. The Northerners drove forward with grunts, battering at the bad armor and reaping a grim toll on the men with no armor. Mat waited, and when his men’s formation started to stagger and break because now they were stepping over bodies, he stepped forward once more. 

Someone drove forward with a dagger, and Mat knocked it away with the haft of his axe, crushing the man’s fingers. Someone else came at him with a sickle, trying to cut him, and Mat let the blow bounce off his mail, and he punished the man for his courage by punching him with a mailed fist. He finished by hooking the man’s rough wooden shield down, his own breath harsh and ragged in his ears, and then twisting the axe in his hands and driving it back up, into the man’s jaw. The man fell back,his green eyes wide and fearful, hands reaching up to try to staunch the flow of blood, and a pikehead pistoned forward, taking the man in his throat. A miscast stone bounced off Mat’s helmet, and he turned to look at where it had come from. He saw the end of the fight.

The smallfolk were taking steps backwards, glancing over their shoulders as they shuffled away from his men’s bloody pike points, and the stench of burst guts and death hung over the impromptu battlefield. Mat spat, and turned his back to the peasants. He didn’t look at the bodies, but now that the fighting, as quick as it had sprung up, was finished, some of his pikemen and archers were going through the bodies. He turned, and Harlon was there with a wineskin.

“We need to find a bloody septon or septa to help bury them.” Matrim said. “Fucking  _ fools! _ ” A group of archers were exchanging wagers about who could hit a fleeing man. They were stopped by Iwan, who slashed the air in front of their bows with his own bowstave, distracting them. 

“They wanted a fight, milord, and weren’t willing to turn and run. ‘Tis no fault but theirs, and only the gods know why they wanted it,” Harlon said. Artos strolled up to stand with them, and he cast an eye about, stroking his beard.

“Probably the horse taking all their bloody grain,” Mat said.

“Stupid shits,” Artos said, and Mat thought it telling that he couldn’t decide whether Artos was referring to the horsemen or the smallfolk. “And the men are even stupider for trying to loot them. Oi, you cunts! Cut it out! His lordship will see you get some coin when we sack someplace, quit trying to rob dead men poorer than wildlings!”

One archer made a rude gesture at the clump of men around Mat, and Artos rolled his shoulders back. To go thump him, presumably. Mat laid a hand on the wiry man’s shoulder.

“Peace,” he told him. “They did well. But I’ll enforce a stricter discipline if we sack a village or castle.” He had no need to describe his stricter discipline— they knew already, from yesterday. “See to the wounded and about prisoners,” he ordered. 

He looked away, away from the dead men being picked over by his men for whatever coin or valuables they might have had, the lifeblood of the men staining the field, men that had plowed and sown and harvested this field, weeded it, taken care of it so it would feed them. And now they watered and fed the field. He swallowed, trying to keep himself from being sick. This hadn’t been a fight, it had been a slaughter, and worse, these people hadn’t deserved it. Now their widows and children would likely starve, and Mat could claim their deaths as his fault, too. 

_ We are at war, _ he told himself.  _ I have marched south at my lord’s orders, and they would have killed men entrusted to my command by their families and my brother.  _ It was small comfort, and he knew that he would dream of dead men’s eyes pleading with him silently that night. Torghen arrived on his shaggy pony, after a while, with Norrey and Shawney. 

"Well done, Northman," the Riverlord said. Torghen and Norrey echoed the sentiment, Mat's uncle including a pat on the shoulder. 

"They were just peasants, uncle. Just angry peasants scared of a lasting winter." Mat cast a glance to the sky, and thought of choosers of the dead, circling overhead as eagles and swans, taking the bravest of the dead men to All-Father's hall.  _ There will be no harvest of souls for the corpse-maidens today,  _ he thought bitterly, for all that the smallfolk had done their best to drive his men from their field and keep them from taking their grain.  _ Odin, keep them from Niflheim. They deserve a seat in the corpse-hall. _

"Not all fights will be as clear as we might wish," Norrey said. "Why, many's a time I've raided your sheep-plowing uncle's lands for a chance at his wife, and now here we are, fighting aside each other."

"Aye." Torghen growled. "At the Stark's command, and never ye forget, 'tis his forbearance as keeps me from holding a hall-burning for you and all your rat-faced kin." Mat ignored his uncle and Norrey as they fell to quarreling, turning and walking away. He knew, of course, that the army had to have grain and meat to feed its bellies, a twisting, sinuous snake made of thousands of men and horses, armored in iron with thousands of pikes and swords. But the reality of coming up with that grain and meat, that stuck in his throat and made him want to be sick. He couldn't, though. He could not appear weak before the other lords, even his uncle, and especially not men that would trust him with power over their lives and deaths.

He slipped into the treeline his archers had poked through what seemed like days ago, but was perhaps an hour. Though he had no heart tree before him, Matrim knelt. His mind went blank of whatever prayers he might have whispered or thought, and instead he tried not to weep. He stayed there for a long while, long enough that now he could hear men digging graves, and at peace for the moment, he stood and went back to his men, knees popping as he dusted off the knees of his breeches. 

"Lord." One of his pikemen nodded. The man was leaning on a spade, his pike and five more propped against each other to form a rough cone against the now darkening sky.

"You men did well," Mat said. "You did well, and I shall see you all paid four silver wolves each for your courage today." Cheers erupted, and one man slapped him on the back.  _ I don’t deserve this, _ he thought. He forced a smile to thank their enthusiasm and made his withdrawal. 

He could not seek solitude again, and he had no desire to wrestle with the bad mood threatening to overtake him. He left his men cleaning up the dead, and went and found a tree to sit under. Jon the Gray found him cleaning his axeblade with a scrap of linen cloth. The bearded soldier settled across from Mat, his own axe across his knees.

“‘T’isnt like the songs they sing, laird,” Jon said. “Especially not that kind of fight. Still, and you didn’t lose your head or get us all killed, which is better than most with their first command. The next one, against real soldiers, that’ll help. That gets your blood flowing, heart racing like a horse, all galloping and thumping.  _ That’s _ better than sex, it is.”

Mat half-remembered a man from his dreams, bearded and wearing green and brown splotched clothing saying much the same thing.  _ War is the greatest team sport on the face of the planet, boys.  _ He didn’t know if it was a dream or a memory, but Jon seemed to think the same sort of thing. He passed a wineskin to Mat, who took it gratefully and drank down the red, some rotgut stuff from a few miles away, perhaps.

“Wine, and women, and wine and women at the same time help with the bad ones.” Jon accepted the scrap of linen from Mat, and set to cleaning his own axe. “Nothin’ makes me harder’n a fight. I suggest you find a woman, because I've seen the wine take men and make them stupid, put an evil spirit in them."

Matrim knew the evil spirit that Jon spoke of. Men that went to war came home, and the war came back with them. Night terrors, reliving their battles, finding solace in beating those weaker than them or the bottle. Some, but not all. Mat knew his father had had them.

"Anyway, lord. I'll see to settling the men." The talk had helped, Matrim thought as Jon left, whistling a cheerful tune. It had helped, but he knew that there would be times he remembered it and hated himself for killing peasants simply looking to not starve. 

_ They gambled and rolled the dice, against soldiers. They lost. Their widows should blame them, _ he told himself, and stood. He had work to do. Their shades would haunt him in time, but now there was work to be done. Perhaps their shades would haunt him less if he helped give them a decent burial.

**~Deep Deeds~**

The village headman was on his knees, wringing his hands, and a group of Wells archers were beside Matrim, with arrows on their strings, held and ready to draw back. This was the third such scene he had been in charge of, and it still sat ill with him just as much as the first.

"Please, milord, please, we need the grain, Lord Staunton took what we had set aside for tithes to the Faith and the Faith took from our seed corn to make it up. You'll be beggaring us, milord." He was a painfully thin man, flaps of skin hanging from his jowls, and Mat tried not to let the man's pleas sway him. The village was clumped together, all eighty or so of them huddled against a wall of the rough sept, trying not weep as pikemen ransacked their homes and barns for grain and livestock. 

Mat was seated on a rough stool, axe held across his lap, helmet between his feet and shield propped against a stool leg. In the distance off to the southeast, there was rain, foretelling a dismal and gloomy afternoon and evening. He blinked, trying to clear some of the wool from his thoughts. 

"I understand, master, I really do." Mat swallowed, and tried to keep his face schooled and stern, a copy of his father's lordly face when dealing with recalcitrant farmers squabbling about property lines or whose bull begat a calf on another man's cow.

"I understand," he repeated. "But I would rather my men take your grain peaceably, and leave you what we can, than sack the village and leave you dead."

"My gods, milord, we will starve! The women will weep and wail, and babes cry for want of milk from their mothers—" he was interrupted in his haranguing of Mat's stone heartedness by a girl of the village, about seventeen or eighteen. She had pretty, striking blue eyes that made Mat want to squirm in shame, long black hair and pretty, unscarred skin. 

"You're a bastard and a son of a bitch and a cruel man," she shouted, and bent down to pick something up. She came back up, and threw whatever it was. A rock, flying true, hit Mat in the nose. 

He took the blow silently, placed his axe on the ground, then stood. He reached a hand up, and his fingertips came away bloody. His pulse quickened, and he felt the want to fight, the urge to lash back out. It pounded in his chest, the desire to fight or run, and he mastered himself by counting to twenty.

"Bryory! By the gods, girl, be silent!" The headman crawled to Mat's feet, beseeching him to spare the foolish girl, she had been addled in the head ever since her father died, and Mat backhanded the man.

"You will both be silent," he said. The girl had been seized by a pair of archers, the both of them grinning. Perhaps evilly, if Mat stopped to consider it. He didn't. Instead he tightened his hand into a fist. The girl struggled against the archers.

"You think me evil, girl," he said. "Evil for condemning your village, your home, to starvation. Evil for taking all your grain, all your pigs and sheep and cattle? Yes," he said when she nodded. "Yet I have done this in three other villages, and only one offered my men pitched battle. We killed those people, like we will kill you if you attempt to kill us. I am not cruel, or evil, or even, as you said, 'a son of a bitch'. I am doing my duty to my men to see that they don't starve while we do our best to kill the King and his men. But those villages are still standing, their men alive and women unraped, because I ordered it so. Just like yours will be, unless we are attacked." 

One of the archers forced the girl's hand to wave at him. "Shall we take her hand, milord?"

Mat shook his head, eyeing the girl. The sleeves of her dress were pushed up, as though she'd been doing washing, and he thought about Jon the Gray's words.

He stared at her, long enough she finally flushed and ducked her head away, and he grinned. 

"Leave her," he said. In one hand, he took the hand she had used to cast the stone. His other he formed into a fist, and then slammed it into her stomach. She slumped over, gasping. At his nod the archers backed away, letting her fall. One of them leered at her, but the shorter one looked like he'd smelled something foul.

"Let this be a lesson," Mat said. He knelt in front of her and she cringed away. He undid the laces of a mail mitten and pulled it off to dangle from the sleeve of his hauberk. With his ungloved hand, he reached forward and tilted her chin up, so she was looking him in the eyes. She tried to jerk away, but he tightened his grip on her jaw and stilled her. After a moment, he released her. Then he slapped her. She cried out and drew back fearfully, and then spat at him, hand covering her cheek. 

"Take all their food. If anyone resists, kill them." He stood and turned away from the girl. "Actions, even courageous ones, have consequences. Next time, think twice before throwing stones at armored men, even ones that restrict themselves to the 'pillage' part of 'rape and pillage.'" 

His men set to with a will, happy to be stealing anything not nailed down or too heavy to carry. He sat back down on his stool, and watched, face schooled to impassiveness. His archers laughed about it, and he saw two of them covering the girl especially.  _ Good. Let her know fear, and let them learn to keep a tighter eye on smallfolk. _

Finally, the day over half done, and with a cool wind rising, the work was done. The food was loaded onto the horses of the men that had them, and his men began to reform. One man’s stirrup strap broke, and ignoring the jeers from his friends, he set it to rights. 

Once the men were mounted and on their way back to the army, nearly two hundred of them, the rest of Mat’s force started marching to the next one. They stopped after what Mat judged to be a mile, and started making camp. 

The weather was softer here in the South, and where men had huddled together under cloaks and plaids, as close to fires as they could get without singeing themselves, now they were content to merely sleep on them, looking up at the stars and whispering quietly. 

Mat sat with his back against a tree, boots off, watching his men. At some point in the night, the group of men that had ridden to the army yesterday trickled their way back. One man swung off his horse, and hurried to a campfire. A whispered argument ensued, and then he picked his way with care to where Mat sat. 

The man squatted in front of him, armor rustling against itself, and in the darkness Mat could see him grinning. 

“Word from the army, milord.” Mat recognized the voice. Torrhen, one of the professional men-at-arms from Queenswell, and a few years older than Mat. He’d helped Mat learn how to properly hold a shield, for the shieldwall. So few of his men, including himself, had yet to stand in that great killing test, where boys became men.  _ Gods, see me stand when my time comes. _

Mat nodded for the man to continue. Then, realizing his mistake, he whispered: “What news, Torrhen?”

“Lord Stark says we’re to swing back towards the northwest and meet up with the army. He got word from Lord Baratheon, who is headed northwest to try to meet up with Stark, Arryn, and Tully in the southeast of the Riverlands. He wants us to avoid a fight if we can, but if we can’t, to try to mask our movements so they can’t see we’re trying to meet up with his lordship. And keep sending grain, of course.” Matrm nodded again. He cursed, and Torrhen laughed.

“I wanted the chance to kill crownlanders too, lord, but we’ll still get it. Maybe just not tomorrow, aye?”

“Aye,” Matrim affirmed. “We’ll show them the color of their guts. Now go get to sleep, Torrhen. There’ll be killing work, and soon.” The man-at-arms, armor still rustling, left Mat to his own devices. He lay flat, back still to the tree, using his plaid as a pillow, and tried to sleep.

_ Armored corpses. The dead, piled high as far as the eye could see. Nothing but snow for miles. The end of the world, then.  _

_ A huge wolf stalked the land, stalking him. He had armor, a shield strapped to a handless arm, and a sword. He knew, as a blind man knows darkness, that his death was coming. A death it might be, but not  _ ** _the _ ** _ death, the final one that would send him to a doom.  _

_ He welcomed it, and grinned. The wolf came at him, as fast as lightning. He managed to strike it, but then it had his hand in its huge jaws, snarling, and he met his death with a song on his lips.  _

When Matrim Wells woke the next day, his weak hand was nothing but pain. When he examined it, he found a length of twine, as thin as a silk ribbon, wrapped tight around his hand, cutting off the blood flow to it. He must have gotten tangled in the night, and it affected his dreams. He undid the twine, and placed it in his belt pouch.

**~Deep Deeds~**

Swinging nearly twenty-five hundred men north and west, away from enemy forces they knew had been ahead of them, and now were behind, was hard. Men grumbled, and cast glances behind them. But Torghen trusted the other lords with him, even if some of them were Norrey and Wull, and they trusted the men that helped lead, the officers and under officers.

The last of their horsemen arrived a day into the new course of march, and Torghen deployed Shawney and his own light cavalry to act as a screening force to their rear, securing them from being smashed from behind by the enemy. They forced their way along small, old tracks that led from village to village, small out of the way places where the lord came by infrequently, if at all.

There were places in the North like that: tractless wilderness that made up so much of what the Starks, Karstarks, Flints and more, ruled. Mat was proud of the fact that he’d been to every village that looked to Queenswell for protection and justice, broken bread and shared mead with the leading men, dandled children upon his knee and kissed maids beneath weirwood trees. 

“Come on, you hard sons of bitches,” Iwan exhorted. “Do you want to live forever to grow old and die of the cold and endless shits and your prick won’t keep stiff?”

“Gods no,” Jon the Small exclaimed. He was leading the first of the pikemen, his own pike slung over his shoulder. His bushy eyebrows were wild with excitement, bristling at Mat from beneath the man’s hat. 

“I want to die at thirty-two,” Artos bellowed. “I want to die with my axe buried in a thin-blooded southron’s skull, and his friends running in terror at Artos of Weeping Weirwood! There’s a winter coming, and I mean to be dead and buried before I have to suffer waking up with my cock soft and my wife seeking a younger man to bed her.” 

“She’ll have no trouble with that, Artos! Just tell her Torrhen with the pikes is a’coming courting, and she’ll go all weak-kneed, because you certainly haven’t been servicing her!” A chorus of voices, nearly forty in all if Mat had to guess, claimed that their names were Torrhen, too, and they’d like to drop by. He grinned, but Artos’ face drew taught, and Mat knew now was probably a good time to step in.

“A craven fears death in battle, lads, but even if the spears never find him in old age, the ailments of an old man will. I certainly don’t want to live to be hoary and bedecked with frost and snow,” Matrim said. “And what better way to go, than a hero’s death with your sword-brothers beside you, and the foe dead at your feet?”

Some joker couldn’t resist, and called out: “In bed with your wife, lord!” Mat took no offense, for he had no wife, and the good-natured joking helped ease the miles a man had to march on weary feet. When at last they came to a village large enough to be worth the trouble of stopping at, Mat stayed on his horse, and his men took a break while they let Shawney’s foot soldiers take on the task of going through the village for livestock and stored seedcorn and vegetables.

He closed his eyes and breathed in deep of the air of the South, and was interrupted from trying to steal a nap in the saddle by a commotion in the village common. Stifling a yawn, Matrim prodded his horse forwards once more, and found the village headman on his knees, a sword at his throat. Anger quickened his heart, stoking fury and rage into preparedness to kill. His hand drifted to his axe.

Two men had the headman by his arms, forcing his neck out, and the man with the sword was toying with it, making slow motions along the villager’s throat, heavily implying he was but a moment from sending the point straight in. The headman was blubbering, trying to plead for his life, and three of the soldiers were laughing, mocking his attempts at saving his own skin.

“By the gods,” Mat said. “What are you men doing here? Take that sword away, we’re here to take their food, not their lives.”

“Fuck off, savage,” one of the men-at-arms spat, and the four others drew their swords, too. Tristifer Shawney arrived, fish-plumed helmet held under his arm as his horse cantered up.

“Unhand your axe, northman,” Shawney ordered. Mat found himself wanting to copy the soldier, spit, and start a fight. His grip tightened for a heartbeat, but then the numbers and circumstances exerted themselves.  _ Bloody godsdamned Southron bastard, _ Mat thought uncharitably.  _ Stupid prick. Self-righteous ass of a ‘ser.’ _ With his men outside of the village resting, and the mountain clansmen acting as security for this raid, Mat knew the fight would go badly for him. He complied, lifting his hand from where the axe dangled on his saddle. 

“So why are you threatening a man of the smallfolk that can’t hurt brave knights in armor?” He mocked them, going for their identity as knights and brave men. 

“They hid their fucking grain,” a second soldier spat, and Matrim kept himself from grinning.  _ So the girl did something about us rather than lie in the dirt and whine. Brave. Stupid, so stupid, but brave, too. _

“So move on,” Mat suggested. “We don’t have the time to sack the village entirely, hunting for hidden food, and any man that takes the opportunity to rape will lose his cock or his life.”

“You savages are the ones most like to rape, and make human sacrifices to your foul tree gods.” Mat drew his sword rather than his axe, because he was still on horseback and they weren’t. He looked at them, the four men on the ground and Shawney. 

The cool calculation of murder made itself easy. If he killed one of the ones being quiet first, and then the most belligerent one fast enough, he might knock the fight out of the group of them. His grip on the sword hilt tightened, and the situation reminded him of the similarity of when he had greeted Roose Bolton before arriving at Winterfell. He had made himself ready to die, but now he didn’t want to. There were women to swive, a wife to eventually marry, children to father, and a Stark to serve. 

_ Southrons aren’t worth it,  _ a part of him whispered, the insular Northman part. But they were just poor people trying to get along as best they could, and they hadn’t asked for the war, or for their homes to be ransacked and their food stolen. Now, facing someone else doing it, it was all too easy to see how he would have appeared the villain. Matrim didn’t like being confronted with a perspective where he was the monster, but he understood it.

They were stopped from the violence inching closer by a clansman with a stalk of wheat in his mouth cantering up on a shaggy mountain pony. “The Flint says and sure you’re sure that there’s na grain t’be found, laird Shawney, and ‘tis time t’be movin’ on, aye, goin’ ta try t’steal a march on the wee cunt what’s been warnin’ the villages ‘n’if we find ‘em to be hangin’ ‘em like a coney, aye?”

“I- what?” Mat wanted to grin at the look of puzzlement on the Riverlord’s face, but provided a translation for the man. He nodded, short and sharp, and his brown eyes watched Mat watch his men leave the village, but they didn’t say anything to each other, and once the men were marching out, Mat spurred his horse into a gallop.

He raced ahead of the column of marching men, horse throwing up dirt behind them, and as they moved ahead the men began to fall behind, until finally it was just Matrim and his horse on the dirt track. He slowed to a trot, something his horse could keep up for miles and miles, and he stopped only to piss against a tree. 

He finally caught up to her after probably six miles, and circling around two villages. His horse caught up to her own fast, and by the time she realized that there was a chase to run, she had already lost. Mat caught the reins of her own horse, an older, smaller pony, and she looked frightened at his appearance. Her blue eyes widened in fear, and he felt a tinge of guilt. He crushed it, ruthlessly.

“So, Bryory,” he said. “Thought you’d do a little good deed, follow us while we swung back to meet up with the main army, and warn any villages you met that we were going to take their food, did you?” 

“No, milord,” she lied, and her defiance and anger lit her face up. Mat wanted her, then, but he settled for forcing the reins of her horse from her hands and tying them to his own horse. He swung out of his saddle, and walked close to her. Even with the height disadvantage, he could see she was scared of him, no doubt remembering the punch and slap, the humiliation. He laid a hand on her thigh, and she tried to flinch back.

“Gods, but you’re fucking brave,” he said. “Brave, but stupid. You’re lucky it was me,” he said. He picked her up out of the saddle, grunted, and settled her on the ground. From his saddlebag he drew a knife. He used it to eat with, but he pressed it into her hand. He took a gold dragon from his purse on his belt, and pressed that into her hand, too. She looked startled.

“What are you doing? Why are you doing this?”

“Because courage deserves a reward, even if it’s stupid, misguided courage as likely to get you murdered as do any good. Take the knife, keep it hidden unless you need to use it. Take the dragon, keep it hidden unless you need to use it. Now go  _ home, _ and stay there. There’s armies all across the Southron kingdoms,” Matrim said. “And quite a few of them won’t be as stupidly decent as I. Mention this to no one, do you hear?”

He swung back into the saddle and left her standing there, staring after him as he rode back to his men, and hoped she would make her way alright.


End file.
